BITE
by cheshres
Summary: Maya is just trying to survive, but, then again, so is everyone else. /an all OC story in TWD universe about the beginning of the end/ FIRST CHAPTER UP - it needs a lot of editing, so please bear with me!


Maya walked in to the restaurant's kitchen, interrupting a rather loud conversation between a cook and the dishwasher. For the second time that shift, they were discussing some TV show to great length. She leaned against the cool metal counter and wiped the sheen of sweat her forehead with the back of her hand. She wasn't sure why the owners had bothered to turn on the fan today, all it did was blow hot air in everyone's face. _Better than having nothing_ , she thought. _Barely._

With the opportunity for a short break before having to return to her tables, she pulled out her phone. She needed to send a quick text to her friends about their plans to go out later that night. It would be the first night they could all hang out since getting back from school. She looked forward to hearing about their college endeavors, despite not having any stories of her own to share. The place had been full since she walked in at 10 AM, which was surprising for a lazy, summer Tuesday. Her wallet definitely wasn't complaining, though.

"Hey, Maya," The cook's beady black eyes were set on her. "You watch Game of Thrones, right?"

She continued typing as she replied, "Not exactly."

"Not exactly?" Hudson, the dishwasher, walked over and stood against the counter beside her.

She locked her phone and slid it in the pocket of her apron. With a coy smile she said, "If we're talking technicalities here, then no. I haven't." He met her with a dimpled smile of his own - the type of smile that could make the world seem a little bit brighter. When Hudson smiled, it wasn't just with his teeth, it was like his whole body radiated happiness and it was always so damn contagious.

"And you thought you could get away with that lie!" He bumped her with his shoulder.

"No, no, no!" She twirled around to face him, "It wasn't a total lie! I mean, you made me watch that video with the pretty girl in it that one time!" Her finger was in his face, but he watched on with amusement. She wasn't really angry nor did she care, but certainly played the part well.

He couldn't help but laugh, "Showing you one video of Daenerys Targaryen does not count as having seen Game of Thrones!"

The cook took this moment to interject, forcing his body into the middle of their conversation, "I have to side with her on this one. I mean it's more than most girls." He gave Hudson a pointed look - _was he jealous?_ \- before turning to Maya with a twisted grin. If this was another ploy for him to ask her out and watch the show together, she wanted nothing to do with it.

Maya rolled her eyes and backed out the doorway to the restaurant, "You two go ahead and continue your nerd session, don't mind me!"

The door swung shut behind her and she heard Hudson call after her, "It's not a nerd session!"

She smiled to herself and walked towards her newest table - an older couple with what looked like their grandson out for lunch. He sat there scribbling with a set of crayons in what appeared to be a superhero coloring book as his grandfather pointed out various things on the page.

It reminded her of when her grandparents used to visit during the summer years ago. They always took her to the same restaurant - a cozy diner on the other side of town. Despite only going once a year, they waitresses always greeted them by name. Her grandmother would always help her color the animals in her book and together they'd make up stories for each of them.

Now, all she had left was a grandmother that she never met and probably never would. Maya heard from her approximately once a year in the form of a Hallmark birthday card with some money inside. There was no love lost for this grandmother from Maya or her own mother. From what she understood, they had a fallout years back and neither was willing to give each other the chance to make amends, so they talked only when necessary. The relationships on her mom's side of the family were so complicated that Maya figured she shouldn't talk to any of them - just to be safe.

As she approached the table, she mustered up a grin and whisked away any thoughts of her family.

She opened her mouth, but before she had a chance to speak an ear piercing scream reverberated through the room. She stopped in her tracks, looking between the shrieking woman and her table. Then she followed their eyes to the window.

All the chatter from patrons and laughter over waffles came to a quick stop. They all strained their necks to try and see what everyone was looking at. Shards of a drinking glass echoed as they hit the ground and shattered - the only thing to break the silence.

Maya slowly made her way to the window, tiptoeing on the wooden floors, as if making a small creak would make the place combust. Through the sheer curtain she peered out at the street and looked on as something out of everyone's worst nightmares unfolded before their very eyes.

She wiped her eyes to make sure it wasn't her mind playing tricks on her. And, oh God, did she wish that was the case.

She wasn't sure how it was possible, but a herd of twenty decaying bodies filtered down the town's single street toward the strip of shops. They limped forward, never running, but also never slowing. Her stomach twisted in knots as she looked on, but she could never tear her mossy eyes away from watching her neighbors be torn to shreds. Surely, this had to be some sort of elaborate prank and soon enough Ashton Kutcher would walk out from the kitchen and tell them that they just got Punk'd.

He didn't, though.

And the dead? The dead were _walking_.

Chaos erupted behind her as people tried to escape with what humanity they had left. Despite the speed advantage humans had, the undead had an even better asset - numbers. In the street, they went up against these rotting corpses and lost, being surrounded by at least five bodies and taken down.

A stench of decay and blood rolled through the open doorway with a breeze and suffocated her. Still, she couldn't look away. Even with the screaming and clangs of metal in the background, she looked on. It was all so surreal, watching a pallid and disfigured person gnawing on the flesh of another, much more alive one.

"Maya!" A shout couldn't even knock her out of her stupor. The voice sounded dreamlike and she wondered if one of the dead had gotten inside and this is how she was dying. At least it didn't hurt. It wasn't until a familiar deep bronze hand clasped her forearm and physically spun her around, that she was saved from the paralyzing fear that had struck every inch of her body, "We have to go – now."

She looked up at Hudson, unable to produce a syllable of a word, so, instead she just nodded. Her light ponytail bobbed up and down with her head, but every inch of her body was telling her no. Watching people being torn limb from limb was enough to convince her that leaving was a very, very bad idea. Her mouth felt like it was full of cotton balls and before she could even change her mind, he had already whisked her towards the back door. So, she did the only thing she could do, she trusted him. She put her life in his hands and hoped to God she was making the right decision.

He paused at the beat-up back door, looking out the small windows for a moment before turning to her. "Are you- uh, where did you get that?" He looked down at her left hand and her eyes followed. Her knuckles were strained and white around the red handle of a kitchen knife.

In her trance, someone must have handed it to her, thinking the 19-year-old girl would know what to do with it. She didn't know what to do with it at all. The idea of being faced with people she had known since she was an infant trying to rip her face off with their teeth terrified her. She wasn't even sure if she could kill them when it came down to it, not that she would know how to kill them, anyway.

She shrugged and pushed the handle in his direction. He shook his head, "Keep it, I'd rather you have it." His brown eyes scanned in the distance once more, looking for any sign of movement in the parking lot. He zeroed in on his car which was less than fifty yards away. With all the commotion out front, he was optimistic that they could reach it without trouble. They would have to be quick, though.

He squeezed her hand once, slowly, before opening the door and propelling them forward.

They sprinted across the lot and one came stumbling out from behind a dumpster. Her white dress had a massive crimson stain down the front of it and more blood dripped down from her chin and neck. As she lumbered towards them, she hissed, teeth stained bright red and raised her arms. With each step her disheveled black hair swayed back and forth. She limped heavily on her right leg and Maya noticed her ankle was snapped in half with her foot turned inwards. The dead woman looked like she could topple over as she moved if there was a sharp gust of wind.

They paused, and Hudson broke his grip so he could kick her out of the way. The force of his leg to her gut caused her to stumble backwards and slam into the dumpster. She didn't stop, though. She never stopped. She just groaned and lunged at them once again.

"Shit!" He grabbed Maya's hand again and the two of them bolted to his car which was about twenty yards away at this point.

Everything around them moved in slow motion and the screams of people being torn apart echoed in their ears. It was a sound they wouldn't forget for a long time. All Maya wanted to do was curl up in a ball and cry until her body physically could not produce any more tears, but her friend's sturdy grip kept her tethered to reality.

The red sedan felt like heaven when they reached it. They took a split second to breathe as the woman with the bloodstained dress stumbled down the hill after them.

Adrenaline was pumping through her veins and Maya could feel every pulse of her arteries as blood ran through her fingers and down to her toes. That pulsing was a reminder that her heart was beating and her cheeks were pink with color. She could still feel the denim of her shorts and smell the sweet summer air tainted with rotting corpses. She was alive. She was alive.

She was _e._

And to just be alive was about to be the greatest luxury of all.

They sped out of the parking lot and took a left which was the opposite direction of Maya's house. For a split second, she wondered if her parents were alright - if they even knew of the horrors going on in town. Or her friends, were they okay? She had to find everyone, to check on them. "Where are we going?"

"My house. Teagan is there."

"Okay." She understood. His sister was practically all he had left, of course they would go for her.

She watched out the windshield as a man tried to face one of the dead with a shotgun. He fired three different rounds right into the corpse's chest, but it never stopped moving. It only faltered for a step before continuing to push forward with dirty, pale hands outstretched toward the man's trembling body. The thing easily pushed him over and clawed at his face. He tried to prop the barrel of the gun between his body and it's snapping jaws as they drew dangerously close to his neck. She turned away before she had to witness his flesh being ripped from his body and Hudson cringed from his seat.

From the corner of his eye he shot her a quick glance, watching her pale skin turn even paler. "Are you okay?"

Her fingers tightened even more around the blade's hilt and her body began to shake uncontrollably. Every inhale was a battle for her, as if she had just run a marathon for the first time in her life. The only thing she could hear was her heart racing in her ears and feel the hot sweat on the back of her neck turn to frost.

"I'm going to be sick," she informed him seconds before throwing her head between her knees and puking all over his floor. Even once her stomach was empty of all contents and she was dry heaving, she couldn't stop. All she could picture was intestines and limbs scattering the street in the tiny town - her town. The way the pavement was stained red in the wake of their car and the tires tracked the blood down the road. How people were still alive - squirming and screaming underneath the swarms of undead. People she knew for what seemed like forever, dead. Her body retched again at the thought of the pain those people must have felt.

And the woman. She couldn't stop thinking about the beautiful white dress and her dark hair must have looked before she died.

When she blinked, she saw the dress once again. Only this time there was blood oozing down its front and her hair was disheveled in her face, masking even worse disfiguration. Her outstretched arms were covered in bites from incisors and canines that had torn away her flesh until they reached bone.

She sat up when her muscles relaxed and her stomach stopped flipping, but she didn't look much better. Her face was still drained of color and she looked like she might puke again, in spite of the fact that her lunch was already settling into the carpet.

"I mean, um, at least your hair was already tied up." Hudson's feeble attempt at lightening the mood only managed to make things worse. She wiped at her mouth with the back of her hand and took a deep breath. She sat there and closed her eyes, focusing on her breathing instead of the bloodbath behind them. All she saw on the back of her eyelids, though, was the grandparents and their grandchild. Their bodies mangled beside each other on the sidewalk, unrecognizable. Maya knew who they were, though. She thought about the little boy and how his entire future was ripped from his small hands.

Everything came crashing down on her for a second time, only this time she wasn't nauseated by the thought of it. No, instead a crippling sorrow washed over her like a wave and she couldn't stop the tide from coming.

Hot tears poured down her bright cheeks at the thought of everything that was lost today. She didn't have time to be experiencing the full _freaking_ spectrum of human emotion, but she didn't know what else to do. The town would never be the same. Her life would never be the same. And as much as she hated to admit it, she wasn't sure she wanted to be alive to witness the drastic changes that would inevitably come.

Again, Hudson wasn't sure how to comfort her, mostly because he felt the same way. There was an air of defeat in the car, and neither of them new how to fix it.

Self-pity would have to do for now.


End file.
